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Little of Earth’s Water is Usable in Everyday Life

(CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE)

Picture of Earth showing if all Earth's water (liquid, ice, freshwater, saline) was put into a sphere it would be about 860 miles (about 1,385 kilometers) in diameter. Diameter would be about the distance from Salt Lake City, Utah to Topeka, Kansas, USA.
Credit: Illustration by Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; Howard Perlman, USGS.

submitted by Samuel Bendett

Homeland Security News Wire - May 9, 2012

Very little of Earth’s water is usable in everyday life; about 96 percent of water on Earth is saline; of the total freshwater, over 68 percent is locked up in ice and glaciers; another 30 percent of freshwater is in the ground; rivers are the source of most of the fresh surface water people use, but they only constitute about 300 mi3 (1,250 km3), about 1/10,000th of one percent of total water

How much water exists on, in, and above Earth?

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Direct Drinking Water Recycling Could Prevent Floods

submitted by Samuel Bendett

Homeland Security News Wire - April 18, 2012

The use of a more streamlined process to recycle wastewater could have saved Brisbane from severe flooding in 2011 and mitigated recent flood risks in NSW, a leading water expert says

Direct potable reuse (DPR) of wastewater could free up billions of liters of water from reservoirs around Australia, giving cities a greater buffer to capture rainwater and control major flooding events, says Dr. Stuart Khan, an environmental engineer at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Water Research Center.

Current plans for water recycling in Australia generally involve Indirect Potable Reuse (IPR), in which reclaimed water is treated to a high standard and then returned to rivers, lakes and aquifers, where it mixes with environmental waters before being re-extracted for further treatment.

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New Initiative Supports National Sanitation Planning

submitted by Gigi Pomerantz

Sanitation and Water for All (SWA) will soon launch a new initiative to help off-track countries meet their WASH goals. The National Planning for Results Initiative (NPRI) aims to pool donor support to develop in-country planning capacity. SWA announced the initiative during their session on National Sanitation Planning at the 6th World Water Forum in Marseilles. The official launch of the NPRI will take place at the upcoming SWA High Level Meeting in April this year.

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A Nano Method to Clean Polluted Water

submitted by Samuel Bendett

Homeland Security News Wire - February 21, 2012

Decontaminating polluted waste water costs millions, but a new discovery by scientists at the University of Brighton could result in huge savings as well as delivering safer, cleaner water

Decontaminating polluted waste water costs millions, but a new discovery by scientists at the University of Brighton could result in huge savings as well as delivering safer, cleaner water.

The research, recently published in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition, represents a significant shift in scientists’ understanding of chemistry. Mercury is a serious contaminant so this breakthrough could save millions of pounds.

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21 Issues for the 21st Century - Result of the UNEP Foresight Process on Emerging Environmental Issues

submitted by Jerome C. Glenn

The process, which was led by the UNEP Chief Scientists with support from UNEP Division of Early Warning and Assessment, involved the identification of emerging issues by UNEP colleagues and a Foresight Panel comprising of 22 distinguished members of the scientific community cutting across a wide spectrum of environmental related disciplines and world regions; the debating and prioritization of the identified issues by the Foresight Panel; the scoring of prioritized issues via an electronic consultation (survey) involving more than 400 scientists worldwide; and a further debating and ranking of the final list of issues by the Foresight Panel, putting into consideration the outcome of the electronic consultation.

The process resulted in a list of 21 emerging environmental issues tagged “21 Issues for the 21st Century” covering the major themes of the global environment including food, land, freshwater, marine, biodiversity, climate change, energy, waste, and technology; as well important cross-cutting issues ranging from the need for better environmental governance, to the need for human behavioral change towards the environment.

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Six Key Solutions for Pro-Poor WASH Financing

submitted by Gigi Pomerantz

by gbastinwsup - Sanitation Updates - February 20, 2012

Financing water and sanitation improvements for the very poor remains a major challenge over large areas of the globe.

In the lead-up to World Water Forum 2012, sector specialists throughout the world have been asked to report specific solutions for addressing this challenge. Based on these concrete examples, IRC and WSUP today propose six key solutions for pro-poor WASH finance.

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Video - Dr. Upmanu Lall - Water Shortages

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Will the Next War Be Fought Over Water?

by Megan Erickson - bigthink.com - December 23, 2011

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Searching for Water in an Untapped Source: the Air

submitted by Albert Gomez

by Zak Stone - good.is - November 14, 2011

      

As climate change and the needs of 7 billion humans increase demands on the global water supply, the pressure is on to come up with ways to squeeze water from a stone—or at least from the air. The Airdrop is a new gadget that steps up to the challenge by helping farmers in severely dry regions source water for irrigation systems by harvesting moisture that's evaporated into the ether. Edward Linnacre, the engineering student behind the project, won this year's James Dyson Award for creativity in engineering design for his low-tech solution to a grave problem.

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Safe Water and a Toilet -- Is That Too Much to Ask... for 2.5 Billion People? (Includes Video Link)

by Matt Damon and Gary White - huffingtonpost.com - November 1, 2011

       

By the time you finish reading this paragraph, one more child will have died from something that's been preventable for over a century. Nearly 40 percent of the world's population is still unable to secure a safe glass of water or access a basic toilet. While we continue to rally around the goal of ensuring safe water and sanitation for all, the real question we are left asking ourselves: how do we truly confront this in a way that results in realizing our vision within our lifetime?

Even today, as solutions are known and available, lack of access to safe water and sanitation continues to claim more lives through disease than any war claims through guns.

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